Basejumper.com - archive

okay where to start, i have a few questions and wondered peoples opinions. i know youve all heard this before but i did start skydiving to get into base, though skydiving has become tons of fun.......

i would like to purchase brand new BASE gear just for personal comfort. i would like to bring it up skydiving with me for training purposes. i am under the impression that base manufacturers will NOT sell you new gear without experience. is this correct? i am referring to both containers and canopies.

CRW. sounds and looks amazing and insanely technical but no one at my local DZ will even take me seriously with 130 skydives when i even mention CRW, so do i focus mainly on accuracy landings? (maybe im jumping at a tighter dropzone though)

subterminal tracking. a skill i would like to really start to dial into but im not sure how to gain experience as there are rarely jumpable helicopters here on oahu and i doubt if there are baloons. any ideas?

anyways thats what im wondering and i would really appreciate different opinions. riser inputs on my skydiving canopy and a bigger, f111 base canopy are quite different it seems. i was set on finding a FJC but i think that seeking a mentor is the route to take. there are some experienced BASE jumpers at my DZ who are becoming good friends of mine, but i havent asked anyone to be responsible for me yet because i am not ready. thanks everyone
chris

that is stupid. this is why I super loath skydivers. here is what you do, do some high pulls with another guy who jumps with you, don't dock, or even touch, just fly close to eachother. taking turns to be the BASE while flying your parachute. eventually the CRW losers will bitch up and take you on a crew jump to at least lurk. you should be doing that on every jump, regardless of canopy.
don't worry about it, . the big thing will be learning how to get used to jumping off of shit instead of out of it, savvy? go cliff jumping, practice stuff like that. more than half the battle and skill is confidence and comfort while doing things that darwin said will remove you from the gene pool.

as for gear, it depends on who you are and who you know. If you have a FJC set up, they will probably send it all to you. if you have a reputable mentor, they will probably send it to you. I really don't think they would hesitate to send you a canopy. A rig and PC is a different story.

Chris, I'm pretty sure this is not allowed due to the lack of a reserve as required by the FAA. The Pilot could get in a lot of trouble.

It's still fine to put the canopy in a large (student) rig and jump it at the DZ, and most people recommend that.

yeah i think i worded that a little funky. i would like to buy new base gear eventually, including a new canopy that i could put in a skydiving rig as tom just said. i was also told that for now an old raven 240 or so put in a skydiving rig could be very close to flying a base canopy, and that they are affordable. maybe this could be my skydiving route for the time being?

another question is how do you find what wing loading you want on base canopies? does every delay differ?

thanks

generally you add 100 to your weight.

I am 160 w/o gear plus 100 equals 260. I jump a 260 and a 266 sized canopy.

exit weight divided by canopy size = Wing load.

(160 + 15lbs gear(est)) / 260 = 0.673

You can and should lean on the conservative side. Bigger is better in BASE.

I wouldn't jump more than a .75 Wingload personally.

but i would.. and do.

big is good, but not too big..if you go below 0,6..the canopy tends to have more frequently off-heading opening, i can`t explain why..im not a rigger..it`s only based on my experience...personally i think a wingload between 0,65-0,75 works great..

You should understand the reasons BASE canopies are sized the way they are.

for ~200 jumps I was at .79 under a un-vented dagger. never got into trouble, but I think i was lucky.
at .79 I was jumping anything from sea level low cliffs to high altitude big walls.

then I bought a vented/ZP-foreskin canopy loaded at .52 for another ~150 jumps.

black and white, I learned a lot from the high wing loading, but like I said i think i was lucky. or jedi, (tamato, tomato).

I would recommend vented no matter what. I do NOT like the breathing of a un-vented slider down opening.

lower wing loadings are good for obvious reasons, you can land slower, and crash safer.

higher wing loadings go faster, penetrate better, (can be a very under-rated thing) more of them are un-vented, and used for terminal/wing-suit jumps.

For early jumps, that are usually a combo of technical/low and terminal/easy, i would still recommend .6-.7 vented.

never noticed this on the past 100 jumps on my vented fox 245 loaded between .55 and .58. was loading it between .6 and .65 on the 50 or 75 jumps before I lost some weight.

agreed. ~150 jumps on blackjack-zp 260 and no off heading openings yet slider down. (~100 jumps) and one 180 on a potato slider up 1 sec delay.
(loaded between .5 and .58)
I think this conspiracy probably came from people moving up in canopy size but forgeting to Up the PC size as well on certain jumps. (more parachute=heavier parachute=bigger PC needed)

I was jumping a canopy loaded .82;1 when I broke my leg, but that probably didn't have anything to do with it.

of course not.

I have noticed it. I think that wingloading is not the entire story. Also important are canopy vents (or not), canopy design (does it inflate well regardless of vents), and canopy size.

In this case, I think that the reason you're not seeing it is that you jump small canopies. I've definitely observed poor opening characteristics below about .6 wingloading on 280+ sized unvented canopies, and on 310+ canopies even when vented.

I've also (related, but not directly on point) noticed that vents seem to make a smaller difference with smaller canopies--mostly because the smaller canopies have better pressurization anyway.

i must read about vented vs non-vented canopies. i will search the articles!!!!!!!!

yeah..i also think so, my bad experience with low wingload was based on a Trolldw285mvd(WL0,59)...i have never experience so much off-heading like i had on this canopy..i made 30+ jumps on it and had 16-18 off-headings, 180, linetwist...before this big one i jumped 240-260 canopies with perfect heading almost all the time

Ditto on that. I had almost a hundred BASE jumps before I spent a bunch of time hucking myself off of the towers at the pool, and still it made a huge difference in my confidence at the exit point. If you're completely comfy even at just 5m with anything from a full-on runner to launching hard from a standing exit to exits facing the tower, you'll find the acrobatics of a flat-and-stable BASE exit that much more natural.

cool thats another something to practice as well. thanks!